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French debate bioethnics bills

4 April 1992

By
SYLVIA HUGHES in
PARIS

Public debate over the ethical issues raised by medical advances is
likely to be rekindled in France by three bills being presented to parliament
in the coming weeks. Government plans for an ambitious framework of laws
on all biomedical issues including embryo research were dropped after widespread
opposition three years ago. Theremaining draft laws have already beencriticised
for their limited scope.

One bill that should not raise controversy eases restrictions on medical
research data banks containing personal information. More contentious are
draft laws on thelegal status of the human body, accessto genetic tests,
including DNA finger-printing, and artificial insemination.

For the first time, there will be penalties for trafficking in human
organs, acting as an intermediary for surrogate motherhood, which is to
be banned, and carrying out gene tests not authorised by a court of law.

Artificial insemination will be restricted to couples who are sterile
or risk passing on ‘a particularly grave illness’ to a child. The bill specifies
that sperm donors must remain anonymous.

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This particular point has been criticised by a group of legal, biomedical
and psychology specialists, who say children conceived from donated eggs
or sperm must be allowed to trace the identity of the donor. One of the
critics is Jacques Testart, a pioneer of French artificial insemination.
He argues that restricting access to artificial insemination is nonsense.
‘As long as there is no legal definition of sterility, a doctor will be
able to declare any couple with trouble conceiving sterile,’ he says.

The critics want the bill to ban the ‘pre-selection’ of embryos before
implantation and to ban the selection of sperm donors on any grounds other
than the risk of passing on serious illnesses.

The day the government announced that the bills would go ahead, the
French general secretary of the Council of Europe, Catherine Lalumiere,
unveiled plans for a European convention on bioethics that France wants
adopted by 1993.